Mr. Bancroft to Mr. Fish
Sir: I yet owe to the Department an answer to two questions proposed to me in your No. 223, of August 23, 1870.
Napoleon had expected Prussia and Austria would exhaust themselves in the campaign of 1866 and leave him the umpire of Europe. He was taken by surprise by the swift success of Prussia. He still hoped to secure to himself acquisitions of territory as a condition to his assent to the peace. For this purpose the Emperor, from Vichy, sent to Mr. Benedetti, at Nicholsburgh, the project of a treaty which the ambassador communicated to Count Bismarck in a note bearing date the 5th of August, 1866. I inclose to you a photographic facsimile of the project of treaty and of the note of Mr. Benedetti.* The Emperor demanded, first, a retrocession of the territory of Prussia held under the treaty of 1815 in excess of the line proposed in the treaty of 1814. Secondly, the Emperor demanded the cession of all that Hesse and Bavaria held on the left of the Rhine. Further, the Emperor demanded that Luxemburg should never again be included in the German Union, and that Prussia should give up its right to garrison the fortress of Luxemburg.
The consequences of this proposition were most momentous. First, Prussia and Austria hastened their peace, of which France was nominally the mediator; but, while it is usual for the mediating power to sign the treaty, the embassador of France did not do so, which was a sign of discontent. Next, the anxiety of France to acquire the Bavarian palatinate and the territory of Hesse on the left bank of the Rhine, enabled Prussia to turn the southern states from enemies into allies, by an offensive and defensive alliance which has now ripened into a consolidated union. The next design of Napoleon was upon Luxemburg, a province which did not belong to Holland, but had the King of Holland for its sovereign. A war seemed unavoidable between the Emperor and Prussia. The strife was ended by the London conference in May, 1867. This is the time when Mr. Benedetti came forward with a new proposition of a treaty that France might receive an acquisition of territory not German but Belgian. Of this treaty I inclose a fac-simile.† As the treaty bears no date, the exact day on which it was taken to Count Bismarck cannot be stated. Here, then, is an answer to your first question: The time when Mr. Benedetti delivered to Count Bismarck the project of the treaty for the surrender of Belgium to France was during the agitation of the Luxemburg question, perhaps in April, 1867.
Your next question is why Count Bismarck did not publish to the world this project of a treaty at the time when it was delivered to him? He did not, indeed, publish the proposition of France, for it might have brought on a war, which he strove to avoid, and the treaty was published only when war had come. But the views of this government on the propositions were in another form made public. The Emperor of France, finding that his propositions met with no acceptance at Berlin, turned his thoughts to Austria, and brought about, in August, 1867, a meeting with the Emperor of Austria at Salzburg. The advantage proposed to [Page 362] Prussia for betraying Belgium into the bands of France was the consent of France to coercing the southern states into the North German Union. In the circular of the 7th of September, 1867, Count Bismarck, referring to the meeting of the two Emperors, which he describes as certainly not dangerous to the peace of Germany, proclaims the intention of Prussia always firmly and in defiance of all other powers to maintain the rights of Germany to reform its constitution as an Internal domestic right, which other states should not impair by intervention, or prevent by menace; but never, under any circumstances whatever, would North Germany coerce the southern German states, or any of them, to join the North German Union, being resolved to wait till they themselves should ask to be received. This state paper and the commentaries given to it by later circulars form some of the most important documents of these late wonderful years. These papers are marked in principle by moderation, and are expressed with a clearness and decision that left no room for misunderstanding. Count Bismarck first maintained that not a bit of German territory should be ceded; and when it was proposed that France should take Belgium, and North Germany South Germany, he rejected the offer and asserted with energy that no foreign power whatsoever, not even Austria, had any right to interfere with the union of North and South Germany; that it was a question for the German states to settle exclusively among themselves. In this lay the most perfect answer to the project offered in 1867 by Count Benedetti. I annex a memorandum found in the imperial archives and published in the “Journal Officiel,” as well as an historical circular of Count Bismarck, dated July 29, 1870,* and the reply of Mr. Von Thile to Count Benedetti, dated the 10th of August, 1870.†
I remain, &c.,